Parts inventory management has always been a critical and complex challenge. Having the right part in the right quantity at the right time and in the right place requires planning, precision, and balance.
Spare parts management (SPM) is about knowing the quantity, place, and time of replenishing spare parts to achieve operational efficiency and performance reliability. The scope of SPM refers to all processes between the supplier and the point of use in which technicians swap out stock items to repair or substitute for defective parts.
Because parts are consumed to maintain assets in service, organizations will have to work within their budget to maximize availability times and prolong the quality of goods.
Benefits of Parts Inventory Management:
Parts management enables an organization to be proactive about stocking inventories efficiently so they can forecast which parts are necessary to continue operating the plant.
This includes collecting information on first or last-time buys, repairable spares, and purchase histories, to decide when to set a re-order point or assess the end-of-life status. An example would be checking the warehouse levels weekly to reorder top-up replacements.
SPM provides a structured framework for what parts are stored and selected, followed by how much quantity to hold, relying on the bill of materials and barcode scanning to count their availability in a storeroom.
Parts management brings together asset performance, cost reduction, and risk mitigation into a system designed for maximizing the ROI on every piece of equipment. It works through multiple avenues from consistent service delivery to labor utilization to improve productivity over time.
